Kojima Productions released a teaser video, a key visual and a new staff list for Death Stranding Isolations on Friday. The anime takes place in the same world as Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding games and will launch on Disney+ or other Disney services in 2027.
The teaser is the first real look at footage. Until now the project had a title, a studio and a director, and not much else.
Who is writing it
Tow Ubukata is overseeing and writing the series scripts. His credits lean hard on science fiction and psychological drama: the Mardock Scramble and Bye Bye, Earth novels, plus scriptwriting for Ghost in the Shell Arise, Fafner and Psycho-Pass 2.
That is a meaningful hire. Ubukata writes dense material and likes characters who argue with their own heads, which fits a story about a world where connection itself became dangerous.
The new staff
- Character designer: Sayaka Koiso
- Color script and art director: Yann Le Gall
- Color designer: Ami Kutsuna
- 3D department manager: Tomohiko Kan
- Compositing director: Jumi Lee
- Editor: Keisuke Yanagi, ACE
- Sound director: Shuhei Abe
The production side was already known. Takayuki Sano directs at E&H Production, the studio behind Ninja Kamui, Bullet/Bullet and the Magic Knight Rayearth television series. Sano’s background is in episode animation direction on Attack on Titan The Final Season and its second part, and on Bullet/Bullet. Ilya Kuvshinov handled original character designs. Kojima is executive producer.
The choice of a hand-drawn pipeline at E&H matters here. Death Stranding is a game built on photoreal terrain and faces, so a traditional animation approach is a deliberate step away from the source material’s look rather than an attempt to copy it.
What the story is
The anime is set in North America, right after Sam reconnects the continent through the Chiral Network. The official synopsis describes the after-effects of the Death Stranding itself, a chain of explosions caused when the dead crossed into the world of the living.
In the middle of that is a girl who grew up in isolation. She did not choose it, but she learned to prefer it, and she let fate push her along. The synopsis also names three other figures: an old man who connects people by a method nobody can explain, a female soldier caught in a loop of war, and a boy angry at how absurd his life turned out.
The framing is clear. Sam’s story already happened. This is about everyone the network did not save.
Timing and history
Kojima first mentioned an animation in a Vogue Japan interview in May 2025. A 2027 Disney launch means about two years from that comment to release, which is fast for an anime of this profile.
The game timeline for context: the original shipped on PlayStation 4 in November 2019, reached PC through Steam in July 2020, and got the Director’s Cut on PlayStation 5 in September 2021 and on PC in March 2022. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach came to PlayStation 5 in June 2025.
Kojima has stayed in animation-adjacent work in the meantime. He voiced his own Cyberpunk 2077 character again for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2.
Two other projects in the same universe
Isolations is not the only adaptation in motion.
A separate animated feature, working title Death Stranding Mosquito, is in production at ABC Animation Studio with Hiroshi Miyamoto directing. Kojima Productions and Line Mileage announced Aaron Guzikowski, creator of Raised by Wolves, as its writer. That one tells an original story.
There is also a live-action film at Hammerstone Studios. Michael Sarnoski, who directed Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, will write and direct. Lars Knudsen and Ari Aster’s Square Peg is producing.
Three adaptations in three different formats, all from the same game, is unusual even by the standards of the current adaptation boom. It also raises a fair question about whether the world has enough story to fill them without repeating itself.
Why it matters for viewers
Disney+ has quietly become a real home for video game anime, and this is one of its bigger bets yet. It also means the series will sit behind a subscription rather than on the free ad-supported platforms where a lot of game adaptations land.
For Kojima fans, the useful takeaway is that the anime is going in a direction the games never did: a small, isolated protagonist instead of a courier crossing a continent. Whether that works is the open question. The teaser suggests atmosphere over action, which is the right call if the writing holds.
No exact premiere date, episode count or cast has been announced.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: the Death Stranding Isolations anime teaser visual, via Kojima Productions.
